Pay no mind to the stacks of cardboard cartons that take up a third of her office floor. It doesn’t matter that she's been in her new office for months. She hasn't had time to unpack. And yes, that looks like someone's dry cleaning draped over them. It is. It’s hers. She has it delivered because she's too busy to deposit her paycheck, much less pick up the laundry. "What was the total?" she asks the delivery guy, pulling out her checkbook. "Oh never mind," she says, handing him a signed check with no amount written in. "Just let me know the total. I trust you."

That's how it is with Fahari Jeffers, co-founder, secretary-treasurer and general counsel of the United Domestic Workers of America/AFSCME (UDW). She has a very full plate, many demands on her time, and sometimes the only way to get it all done is to trust people to do the right thing.

The people Jeffers represents do the difficult, low-paid work most of us shun, given the chance. Some are housekeepers, doing the lonely, repetitive tasks of cleaning others' homes.

Most, however, are in-home caregivers for the disabled and elderly. Their wages — historically at or near the minimum — are paid by counties, who until last year called them "independent contractors" and refused to take responsibility for the conditions of their employment. Last year the UDW won state legislation creating conditions for these workers to bargain collectively. Now the mission of the UDW is to organize and represent as many of them as possible.

The UDW is the first union for domestic workers in the United States. It now numbers about 10,000 members statewide, with nearly 4,000 in San Diego County. Major organizing drives are underway in Riverside, Santa Barbara, Orange, Plumas, Placer and El Dorado counties, among others.

A previously contentious relationship with the Service Employees International Union over the right to organize in-home care workers in Los Angeles has been amicably settled, and both unions are members of the California Homecare Council.

Jeffers, 41, credits the council with securing a $100 million increase in state funding for in-home care in the current state budget. Wages will be increased for the state's 200,000 home care workers from their current $7.50 to $11.50 per hour over the next few years.

Jeffers' road to the UDW began in San Diego. Born a "Navy brat," her family lived alternately in Alameda, San Francisco, Puerto Rico and New York. They settled back in San Diego in the mid-1960s, "when my mother said she wasn’t going to move anymore," Jeffers says.

Her life as an activist began as a youth interested in black nationalism. Later she, her future husband Ken Seaton-Msemaji and friend Greg Akili founded NIA, a black community-building organization named after the Swahili word for "purpose."

During these years at the grassroots level, the three young organizers came under the spell of legendary United Farm Workers Union founder Cesar Chavez.

"Cesar took an interest in us," Jeffers recalls. "He told us it was his dream to organize domestic workers because, he said, they and farmworkers were the most exploited workers in America." Both groups had been specifically excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, she says, and thus enjoyed almost no protection.

The trio spent nearly three years with Chavez learning both the theory and practice of union organizing, and doing grassroots work statewide. On the day that then-Gov. Jerry Brown visited the UFW's headquarters, Jeffers remembers, "we sat in Cesar's backyard and decided to make it our life's work to form a domestic workers' organizing committee."

The friends came home to San Diego to begin, despite the overwhelming odds against them. "We were encouraged by no one but our guts and Cesar," Jeffers remembers. "Everyone said, 'Hey, we know you love Cesar but get real.'" No one had ever been able to organize the highly dispersed domestic workers, many of whom had little education and low skills. If successful, Jeffers and her friends would be the first to do it.

Chavez was present when the union signed its first collective bargaining agreement in December 1980.

Jeffers admits that San Diego is an unlikely home for such a radical labor effort. "I think, though, that it was to our benefit to be born here. The trip wire to set off opposition is not so sensitive here. San Diego does not have the intense polarization of interests that you'd find, for example, in Los Angeles."

She credits Msemaji, now the UDW president, for understanding the importance of bipartisan political support for the infant union. The union's information packet includes letters of praise from such political extremes as former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and John Doolittle, then a Republican state senator and now a member of Congress.

Jeffers holds degrees from San Diego State and National universities, and earned a law degree at Western State University College of Law (now Thomas Jefferson School of Law). In addition to her union post, she has been on the Convention Center Corp. board since 1995, nominated to the post by Mayor Golding. She is currently the board chair.

"Fahari's labor organizing skills are very evident in her work on the Convention Center board," says Fred Sainz, the center's vice president of communications. "She clearly understands the importance of our line workers, and she shows a heightened sensitivity to their role in the Convention Center's accomplishments."

When the center's new sails pavilion opened recently, reports Sainz, Jeffers was the first to suggest that special events be held to highlight the contributions of the workers who built it, and the people who will work in it every day.

Her priorities in this, her final year, focus on letting more San Diegans know about the impact of the convention center on the local economy, especially among those groups that may not have felt a connection in the past.

Although convention centers are often loss leaders for their communities, she says, their economic benefits are felt far. "Think of all the suppliers the convention center uses, how much it generates for the hospitality industry, and all the visitors who go, for example, to SeaWorld," she says.

It’s also important to her to raise labor relations at the center to a new level for both union and nonunion workers. (About 60 percent of the Convention Center staff belongs to labor unions.)

"The convention center itself is pretty much just a box," she says. "What makes it different is the impression made by the people who work there. If we didn’t have good relations with our employees, believe me, it would be apparent in the service."

Her continuing goal is to ensure that center workers "are paid at a level where they feel good about the place."

Jeffers says she does not feel like an official representative of labor in her convention center capacity. Nor, she says, have the unions approached her apart from the board. "They have been very principled about this," she said. However, she feels there probably should be formal representation for the convention center's unions on the board, "considering how critical they are to the operations."

Carlos LeGerrette has witnessed Jeffers' growth as a labor leader since her earliest days with Chavez.

"She has risen from just learning a concept to the executive leadership of a multi-thousand-member organization," he says. "She came out of the 'hood and has become a tremendous success."

LeGerrette knows Jeffers from both the labor and civic sides of her career. He served with Jeffers on the Convention Center board and is now administrator of the Building Trades Preapprenticeship Program/AFL-CIO. He has this advice for people who work with her:

"She is bright, hardworking, compassionate and tenacious, but don’t get on the wrong side of her, especially not for the wrong reasons."

A wrong reason, he says, like politics.

Steve Cushman is one who has opposed Jeffers from time to time.

Cushman was one of three board members taken to task by Jeffers in 1996 for what she said was orchestrating "an arrogant power play designed to provide a personal political platform for certain individuals."

She accused Cushman, Brian Seltzer and Bill Roper of "continuing a blatant pattern of excluding women and minorities" from board leadership positions.

The incident ended with Seltzer's election as board president.

Today, Cushman describes Jeffers as "a fair person to disagree with."

"She and I come from very different sides of the ledger," he says, "but we are able to work together on issues for the good of the Convention Center. She is a definite asset to the board."

LeGerrette ascribes Jeffers's ability to work with former opponents as one of her key strengths. "Fahari probably has more political experience than anyone else on that board," he says. "She knows when she must reach across a divide and then move on."

Jeffers's third goal for her year as board president is to continue laying the groundwork for the convention center to attract international conventions. "It’s a bit of a challenge with our airport, but I understand we have been ranked one of the top three convention facilities in the world, so we should be attracting international meetings."

Her interest in promoting San Diego to the world is one reason she was recruited to serve on the board of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, says Reint Reinders, ConVis president.

As an ex-officio member of the Convention Center board, Reinders has observed Jeffers in action during her six-year tenure. "She has learned a great deal about marketing (San Diego as a) destination. I expect she will bring a fresh perspective to our board."

Wedged between her service to the UDW, the convention center board, the ConVis board and preparation to be a delegate to the upcoming Democratic National Convention, Jeffers is mother to several formally and informally adopted children and for eight years has chaired the St. Rita's Catholic Church Annual Bazaar.

It brings her, she says, "a fair measure of regret, resentment, exhaustion and joy."

And a jam-packed schedule since she, like Mayor Golding, hasn't yet had time to read her cell phone user's manual.

— Joanne Gribble